Episode Details

The 1860 presidential election began with a Republican convention in Chicago where every front-runner carried baggage. William Seward had predicted an irrepressible conflict and opposed nativism, Salmon P. Chase could not unite even Ohio's delegation, and Edward Bates's ties to the Know Nothings alienated German-American voters. Abraham Lincoln, fresh from his Cooper Union speech, set out to be everyone's second choice. His managers printed counterfeit admission tickets to pack the Wigwam with supporters, and after Seward fell short on the first ballot, delegates swung to Lincoln, who won on the third ballot with Hannibal Hamlin as his running mate.

The Democrats broke apart. At Charleston in April 1860, 50 Southern delegates walked out over a federal slave code, the chair applied the two-thirds rule to the original delegate count, and Stephen A. Douglas failed through 57 ballots. After 110 more delegates left in Baltimore, Northern Democrats nominated Douglas and Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge, while the Constitutional Union Party ran John Bell. With party-printed tickets and no Republican electors in 10 Southern states, Lincoln was not an option there. He won with under 40 percent of the popular vote, and the episode shows that even a combined opposition would have left him 169 electoral votes, more than the 152 he needed.

• Abolitionist nominee Gerrit Smith, too ill to attend his convention, mailed $50 to help print ballots.
• Turnout reached 81.2 percent, the highest in American history to that point.
• Lincoln narrowly lost his home county of Sangamon, Illinois, to Douglas.
• Douglas finished second in the popular vote with about 29 percent but last in the Electoral College, winning only Missouri and three New Jersey votes.
• Seven Deep South states seceded before Lincoln's inauguration, and Douglas, after rallying support for the Union, died of typhoid three months later.